Page 117 of The Sleepwalker

Gregory steadies the pistol with his free hand and curls his finger around the trigger.

‘Look away if you don’t—’

The butt of Joona’s gun hits him square on the temple, causing his head to jerk to the side. Gregory slumps over and manages to catch his glasses just before they hit the ground.

Joona steps forward and kicks his colleague’s pistol beneath the house.

Åke has managed to get to his feet and is hurrying away across the gravel, his ponytail thudding between his shoulder blades with each step he takes.

Peck is still sprawled on the ground, spluttering blood onto his own shoulder.

The boy is standing over by the frozen field with a glazed look on his face.

Joona calls regional command and requests backup and an ambulance as he sets off after Åke, who is running towards a rusty pickup over by the tool shed.

The girl watches him go without a single flicker of emotion.

‘Helicopter!’ Joona repeats, right as he hears a loud whooshing sound.

Peck has fired his distress flare. It races past him, low to theground, and hits Åke on the back as he opens the car door.

The bright magnesium light briefly illuminates the vehicle before the explosives detonate in a large, deafening fireball.

The shockwave is like a powerful kick to the ribs, and rocks and splintered wood fly through the air.

Joona lands on his back, his head slamming into the ground. The pickup rolls twice and then comes to a rest on its side. Burning wreckage from the shed is thrown into the field, and gravel rains down on the courtyard.

Joona gets to his feet.

Through the dust and smoke, he can see a crater in the ground where Åke was standing just a moment ago.

The young girl is bleeding from a gash on her forehead.

On the ground in front of her, there is a sooty severed thigh.

‘Fuck,’ Gregory whimpers.

A large chunk of the main building is gone, and every window is broken.

A dead pine is in flames.

The hens that flapped up into the air come back down to land.

A piece of shrapnel from the explosion has penetrated the rain drum, and a thin, white cascade of water has begun to spurt out through the hole.

42

It is seven thirty in the morning, and Joona is walking down a corridor in the women’s wing of Kronoberg Remand Prison with the duty officer.

During the day, the inmates’ cell doors are all left unlocked, and there is nothing but a red line marking the staff area.

They pass the day room, where a grey-haired counsellor from a visiting addiction team is talking to a thin woman who is clawing at her forearms.

Ann-Charlotte Olsson is being held on suspicion of drugs offences, handling stolen goods, weapons offences and violations of the law governing flammable and explosive substances.

The forensic investigation is ongoing amid the wreckage of the farm in Rickeby.

Joona’s ears are still ringing after the explosion, as though the sound of the wind blowing through the trees in a forest follows him wherever he goes.